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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Pandemic!

Sarah and I bought Pandemic at Barnes & Noble today and tried it out this evening. It was a really fun game and we really enjoyed the two games that we played. In short, Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players.

In Pandemic, the players travel around the Risk-like board, treat infections and discover cures for diseases. The goal of the game (and its win condition) is to discover the cures for all the diseases. Every turn, the diseases build up on the cities where they are, and if the infection in the city becomes too large an outbreak occurs and it spreads to neighboring cities. The players have to move around the map and lower the infection levels while they try to discover the cures for the diseases.

Discovering a cure for a disease allows the player to more easily treat infections of that type. Diseases are cured by discarding 5 cards of that color while at a research stations (which are established throughout play). Each player gains two cards at the end of each turn. Each card has a color and a city. Cards allow the player to move to that city, establish a research station at that city, or can be discarded in groups of 5 to cure that disease.

Occasionally, a drawn card will be an Epidemic card, for which Sarah and I like to yell, "Crisis Alert!" (see video above). An Epidemic causes an immediate rise in infection and increases the rate at which the infection spreads.

There are 5 classes that the players can be, each with various abilities. The researcher only needs 4 cards to cure a disease, the medic treats diseases more easily, etc.